So now we have our guide lines all drawn we can start with the modelling process. All my models always start life as a box, a virtual ball of clay. So what we need to do is firstly ruff out the basic shape that our guides depict. so start selecting faces and extruding until you have the basic form.

Here we have our most basic form made with extruding faces. So iv got as close as i can with just extrude and bevel next we need to start pulling a few verts to get our outer edges inline with the guides. You can see the benefit now of drawing the spline guides. It can take a while to draw them but its worth it in the long run.

When you are satisfied with your forms the next stage i do is to cut in some details, So i select a few edges and access my meshtools and press connect1 until i have some detail i can work with. The first cuts i made are were his ears are and were his eyes are. When you have cut in the edge loops you can start pulling out polys and verts, slowly building up the shapes.

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Im just going to show you the basic concept of edgeloop select and edgering select. for those of you who have been living in a cave for the past year :). The new polyobject is a big step forward over editmesh that was used in max 3. Its a lot better to work with and you can do a lot more with it just look at all the meshtools.. Theirs also a script called ERASE EDGELOOP that just dissolve's a whole edgeloop and removes all the leftover verts aswell very neat tool. So look at the pic, you see the edges coloured red, there all selected with one click of the meshtools. All you do is select one edge hit the edgering tools and all the edges that run in a line will be selected. same idea for edge loop except edges that run end to end are selected see the green line in the pic.

The second pic shows all the edges connected after me firstly hitting edgering select then connect 1. a hell of a lot faster than divide or cut.